TA is here
09-24-2022, 07:13 PM
#251
Gets Weekend Reserve
Joined APC: Jul 2007
Posts: 3,791
The position you have adopted may or may not be a "realist" position. But it may also be a pessimistic, sky-is-falling type of position.
There is reason to believe that 2023 offers some hope both for the larger economy and for the airline industry.
In an interview yesterday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained that she expects 2023 to be a better year than 2022 in terms of inflation with a target of two percent for next year.
Raoul Pal, former Goldman Sachs fund manager, founder of Real Vision, and publisher of Global Macro Investor, asserted in a recent discussion that a year from now, "We will have seen a recession and we will likely be coming out of it. Whether we're fully out of it or not doesn't matter. A recession at some point in the future means that the federal reserve will stop hiking and will stop shrinking the balance sheet. And they will probably go toward cutting in the future. In twelve months time, the probability of inflation being at eight percent is extremely low."
Bloomberg reported in June that IATA expects the fortunes of the global airline industry to improve in 2023, with North American carriers leading the way. It expects North American airlines to post a collective profit of $8.8 billion 2022 followed by the rest of the global industry returning to profitability in 2023.
It sounds as though, while many economists acknowledge the risk of recession in the next year, it appears many of them also believe that we will be climbing out of it by this time next year. Even in the midst of a possible recession, demand destruction in the airline industry is expected to be minimal if it ends up existing at all.
Over the summer, IATA Director General Willie Walsh told Bloomberg that he anticipates capacity to be restricted in the US domestic market "for some time to come" due to restrictions around the minimum hours required for commercial airline pilots. In other words, IATA doesn't expect the issue of a pilot shortage in the US to resolve itself anytime soon. One way to view the pilot labor market is in terms of supply and demand. If supply is constricted as Director Walsh predicts, and demand remains robust, price for our services should experience upward pressure. Given all of the above, there is a decent chance that the fair market value for our services will rise - if we don't torpedo ourselves by agreeing to lower total contract values than the market will support out of fear of worst case scenarios.
In terms of the macro economic environment, we are not necessarily, as you describe, "headed off a cliff in terms of a good negotiating environment." There is a counter argument to be made on that point.
But there remains, in terms of negotiating leverage, factors far more favorable to labor than whatever impact the global macro economic environment might produce.
Think about what just happened with the national consortium of twelve railroad unions representing more than 100,000 workers and 40% of America's freight capacity. What leverage did they have? And what was the source of that leverage?
Their leverage stemmed from the fact that they posed the credible threat of bringing the operations of the companies they worked for, along with the entities that depended on them (like AmTrak), to a screeching halt. And the source of that leverage was the right they had under the Railway Labor Act (RLA) to march down the path toward self help. It's the exact same leverage you at Alaska have available to you and, being almost a year into mediation with near-unanimous strike authorization vote (SAV) behind you, you're much further down the path of fully developed RLA leverage than most of the other airlines currently in negotiations.
If the National Mediation Board (NMB) was willing to declare an impasse in the railroad workers' dispute that jeopardized the entire national economy in the midst of spiking inflation and already-compromised supply chains, why would it not be willing to do so in the case of Alaska Airlines? Because some towns and villages in Alaska might have their supplies cut off?
The railroad workers entered mediation in January of 2022. They were released from mediation in June of this year. That is an insanely short time in mediation. Why do you think it was so quick?
It might have something to do with the fact that the political composition of the NMB changed late in 2021 from two GOP members and one Democratic member to two Democratic members and one GOP member. When the vote to release the rail workers from mediation was conducted in June of this year, guess which NMB member voted to keep them in mediation? That's right, the GOP member cast the dissenting vote and the two Democratic members of the NMB voted to release the rail workers. This change in the composition of the NMB is a potentially very significant development for labor that very few pilots are talking about.
Following their release from mediation, the rail workers then went into a mandatory 30-day cooling-off period. In July, President Biden established an optional 60-day Presidential Emergency Board (PEB), during which time self-help was prohibited. The PEB was due to expire Friday, September 16. Magically, On September 15, railroad management, who had refused to relent to the workers' demands for relief on sick days up to the very end, caved to the pressure placed on them by the rail workers and the Biden administration with less than 24 hours remaining before a strike would have commenced.
Would Congress have intervened? I don't know. Two GOP Senators attempted to initiate legislation that would have forced the rail employees back to work while foregoing their demands for more sick days but Senator Sanders blocked them. Even if a Democratic House would have passed a bill forcing the workers back to work, would Biden have signed it into law? If so, how many days would the strike have gone on before all of that would have been hashed out legislatively?
Alaska entered mediation in the fall of 2021. You conducted a nearly unanimous SAV in May of this year. You've already been in mediation longer than the rail workers were when they were released. Your SAV has already demonstrated tremendous unity around the idea of using the leverage available to you under the RLA. You are so close yet panicky displays of melting resolve like yours demonstrate how far you guys might actually be.
Good faith bargaining does not require Alaska to accept a milquetoast agreement. Alaska's pilots do not have to accept this TA out of fear the mediator or the NMB might somehow think their negotiating team wasn't reasonable enough. In a 2009 case brought by Spirit ALPA against Spirit, the court asserted, "movement toward the position of the other side is not a requirement of good faith bargaining." It cited an example from a Trans International Airlines flight attendant dispute that had reached another court:
And beyond all of the above, Alaska's pilot group have barely begun to flex the muscle it has available to it under the RLA. One of the primary sources of leverage under the RLA available to labor groups like pilots is called the "book-away phenomena." The book-away phenomena occurs before a strike. It is described by the current Acting Director of the Office of Mediation Services at the NMB, John Livingood, on his website about the RLA, as having:
If Alaska's pilots were to approach a release from mediation and much more so, if they were to actually be released, news stories would be published telling the public something like, "Alaska pilots released from federal talks. Strike possible in 30 days." What would you do if you heard, for example, Southwest Airlines (my airline) pilots might be on strike six weeks from now and you needed to be in Austin for a wedding then? You could buy tickets on Southwest, Alaska, American, Spirit, Frontier, and others. But let's say SWA's tickets were $100 cheaper than anyone else's tickets. Would you still buy the SWA tickets if you really needed to be in Austin or City X for a wedding or whatever other important event? Or would you book away from SWA onto some other carrier that was assured to not be on strike on the date of your travel?
Do you think Alaska management wants to deal with passengers booking away from their airline if your pilot group were to hold strong and get released? Do you think that this sort of book-away effect wouldn't give your pilot group significant leverage even before a strike occurred? How long do you think Angle Lake would want to deal with passengers booking away from them?
And, in the extremely unlikely event you guys actually ended up on strike, how long do you think the strike would last? How long has the average mainline pilot strike in the US lasted in the last 25 years? Would it last as long as the four-day Spirit strike in 2010? The 14-day Northwest strike in 1998? The 24-minute American strike in 1997? Could you not handle, worst case, two weeks walking the line for the betterment of your profession, yourself, and your family?
Would management try to break the strike with scabs in the midst of a historic pilot shortage?
You have far more leverage than you are alluding to you when you ask in an as-if-we-are-helpless shrinking violet, chicken little sort of way, "I genuinely ask what sort of leverage do you see to get?"
Are you serious? Do you understand how the RLA works? Do you understand how much untapped leverage you all have?
There is reason to believe that 2023 offers some hope both for the larger economy and for the airline industry.
In an interview yesterday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained that she expects 2023 to be a better year than 2022 in terms of inflation with a target of two percent for next year.
Raoul Pal, former Goldman Sachs fund manager, founder of Real Vision, and publisher of Global Macro Investor, asserted in a recent discussion that a year from now, "We will have seen a recession and we will likely be coming out of it. Whether we're fully out of it or not doesn't matter. A recession at some point in the future means that the federal reserve will stop hiking and will stop shrinking the balance sheet. And they will probably go toward cutting in the future. In twelve months time, the probability of inflation being at eight percent is extremely low."
Bloomberg reported in June that IATA expects the fortunes of the global airline industry to improve in 2023, with North American carriers leading the way. It expects North American airlines to post a collective profit of $8.8 billion 2022 followed by the rest of the global industry returning to profitability in 2023.
It sounds as though, while many economists acknowledge the risk of recession in the next year, it appears many of them also believe that we will be climbing out of it by this time next year. Even in the midst of a possible recession, demand destruction in the airline industry is expected to be minimal if it ends up existing at all.
Over the summer, IATA Director General Willie Walsh told Bloomberg that he anticipates capacity to be restricted in the US domestic market "for some time to come" due to restrictions around the minimum hours required for commercial airline pilots. In other words, IATA doesn't expect the issue of a pilot shortage in the US to resolve itself anytime soon. One way to view the pilot labor market is in terms of supply and demand. If supply is constricted as Director Walsh predicts, and demand remains robust, price for our services should experience upward pressure. Given all of the above, there is a decent chance that the fair market value for our services will rise - if we don't torpedo ourselves by agreeing to lower total contract values than the market will support out of fear of worst case scenarios.
In terms of the macro economic environment, we are not necessarily, as you describe, "headed off a cliff in terms of a good negotiating environment." There is a counter argument to be made on that point.
But there remains, in terms of negotiating leverage, factors far more favorable to labor than whatever impact the global macro economic environment might produce.
Think about what just happened with the national consortium of twelve railroad unions representing more than 100,000 workers and 40% of America's freight capacity. What leverage did they have? And what was the source of that leverage?
Their leverage stemmed from the fact that they posed the credible threat of bringing the operations of the companies they worked for, along with the entities that depended on them (like AmTrak), to a screeching halt. And the source of that leverage was the right they had under the Railway Labor Act (RLA) to march down the path toward self help. It's the exact same leverage you at Alaska have available to you and, being almost a year into mediation with near-unanimous strike authorization vote (SAV) behind you, you're much further down the path of fully developed RLA leverage than most of the other airlines currently in negotiations.
If the National Mediation Board (NMB) was willing to declare an impasse in the railroad workers' dispute that jeopardized the entire national economy in the midst of spiking inflation and already-compromised supply chains, why would it not be willing to do so in the case of Alaska Airlines? Because some towns and villages in Alaska might have their supplies cut off?
The railroad workers entered mediation in January of 2022. They were released from mediation in June of this year. That is an insanely short time in mediation. Why do you think it was so quick?
It might have something to do with the fact that the political composition of the NMB changed late in 2021 from two GOP members and one Democratic member to two Democratic members and one GOP member. When the vote to release the rail workers from mediation was conducted in June of this year, guess which NMB member voted to keep them in mediation? That's right, the GOP member cast the dissenting vote and the two Democratic members of the NMB voted to release the rail workers. This change in the composition of the NMB is a potentially very significant development for labor that very few pilots are talking about.
Following their release from mediation, the rail workers then went into a mandatory 30-day cooling-off period. In July, President Biden established an optional 60-day Presidential Emergency Board (PEB), during which time self-help was prohibited. The PEB was due to expire Friday, September 16. Magically, On September 15, railroad management, who had refused to relent to the workers' demands for relief on sick days up to the very end, caved to the pressure placed on them by the rail workers and the Biden administration with less than 24 hours remaining before a strike would have commenced.
Would Congress have intervened? I don't know. Two GOP Senators attempted to initiate legislation that would have forced the rail employees back to work while foregoing their demands for more sick days but Senator Sanders blocked them. Even if a Democratic House would have passed a bill forcing the workers back to work, would Biden have signed it into law? If so, how many days would the strike have gone on before all of that would have been hashed out legislatively?
Alaska entered mediation in the fall of 2021. You conducted a nearly unanimous SAV in May of this year. You've already been in mediation longer than the rail workers were when they were released. Your SAV has already demonstrated tremendous unity around the idea of using the leverage available to you under the RLA. You are so close yet panicky displays of melting resolve like yours demonstrate how far you guys might actually be.
Good faith bargaining does not require Alaska to accept a milquetoast agreement. Alaska's pilots do not have to accept this TA out of fear the mediator or the NMB might somehow think their negotiating team wasn't reasonable enough. In a 2009 case brought by Spirit ALPA against Spirit, the court asserted, "movement toward the position of the other side is not a requirement of good faith bargaining." It cited an example from a Trans International Airlines flight attendant dispute that had reached another court:
And beyond all of the above, Alaska's pilot group have barely begun to flex the muscle it has available to it under the RLA. One of the primary sources of leverage under the RLA available to labor groups like pilots is called the "book-away phenomena." The book-away phenomena occurs before a strike. It is described by the current Acting Director of the Office of Mediation Services at the NMB, John Livingood, on his website about the RLA, as having:
If Alaska's pilots were to approach a release from mediation and much more so, if they were to actually be released, news stories would be published telling the public something like, "Alaska pilots released from federal talks. Strike possible in 30 days." What would you do if you heard, for example, Southwest Airlines (my airline) pilots might be on strike six weeks from now and you needed to be in Austin for a wedding then? You could buy tickets on Southwest, Alaska, American, Spirit, Frontier, and others. But let's say SWA's tickets were $100 cheaper than anyone else's tickets. Would you still buy the SWA tickets if you really needed to be in Austin or City X for a wedding or whatever other important event? Or would you book away from SWA onto some other carrier that was assured to not be on strike on the date of your travel?
Do you think Alaska management wants to deal with passengers booking away from their airline if your pilot group were to hold strong and get released? Do you think that this sort of book-away effect wouldn't give your pilot group significant leverage even before a strike occurred? How long do you think Angle Lake would want to deal with passengers booking away from them?
And, in the extremely unlikely event you guys actually ended up on strike, how long do you think the strike would last? How long has the average mainline pilot strike in the US lasted in the last 25 years? Would it last as long as the four-day Spirit strike in 2010? The 14-day Northwest strike in 1998? The 24-minute American strike in 1997? Could you not handle, worst case, two weeks walking the line for the betterment of your profession, yourself, and your family?
Would management try to break the strike with scabs in the midst of a historic pilot shortage?
You have far more leverage than you are alluding to you when you ask in an as-if-we-are-helpless shrinking violet, chicken little sort of way, "I genuinely ask what sort of leverage do you see to get?"
Are you serious? Do you understand how the RLA works? Do you understand how much untapped leverage you all have?
I was very pleasantly surprised that Alaska pilots voted for strike authorization in those numbers. They really have their company over the barrel, yet they seem to be, as Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption says, institutionalized in a perpetual concessionary cycle. They don't know what to do in this pilot market. The excuses on this thread are downright comical to the point I truly feel sorry for their pilot group. Talk about a battered spouse syndrome.
Seriously, who in their right mind votes in an agreement that rewards management for stalling a contract? Start at your amendable date, take hours paid, retirement contribution differential and figure out what that is and if anything, demand you be made whole. That's it... you never vote yes on any TA that doesn't make you whole for management stalling. By voting yes, you are literally incentivizing your management team to do this every time. That alone right there is worth shooting this down over.
09-24-2022, 07:20 PM
#252
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2018
Posts: 1,264
If the Alaska NC/MEC is giving this to their membership with the recommendation to vote yes or with no recommendation at all, it represents a dark day for our profession.
The only explanations for such a move are all bad ones. Either they succumbed to negotiating fatigue, they were co-opted by management, they gave way to Stockholm Syndrome, they believed the "blarney"* the mediator was telling them, etc.
If the Alaska NC/MEC is handing it over to a vote with some sort of recommendation to vote no, it's a high-risk move, but sort of barely understandable but still head-shakingly bad.
Are you saying the Alaska NC/MEC is recommending a yes vote or putting forth no recommendation at all?
*From a 1991 RLA case: "we do not think it appropriate for a court to examine a Board member's statements, made in the course of mediation, so critically. Successful mediators often liberally use blarney (hoomalimali in Hawaiian) as one of their mediation tools. See Local 808, 888 F.2d at 1436-37. The Chairman's statement may well have been a ploy. By inquiring as to the true meaning of such a statement we could well undermine its entire purpose by forcing the Board to admit it was a tactic to spur negotiations."
09-24-2022, 07:41 PM
#253
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2005
Posts: 500
Nailed it! I see the yin/yang symbol and skip right over the post. Abolultely no value it reading it.
09-24-2022, 07:59 PM
#255
Gets Weekends Off
Thread Starter
Joined APC: Dec 2005
Posts: 8,933
The position you have adopted may or may not be a "realist" position. But it may also be a pessimistic, sky-is-falling type of position.
There is reason to believe that 2023 offers some hope both for the larger economy and for the airline industry.
In an interview yesterday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained that she expects 2023 to be a better year than 2022 in terms of inflation with a target of two percent for next year.
There is reason to believe that 2023 offers some hope both for the larger economy and for the airline industry.
In an interview yesterday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained that she expects 2023 to be a better year than 2022 in terms of inflation with a target of two percent for next year.
Raoul Pal, former Goldman Sachs fund manager, founder of Real Vision, and publisher of Global Macro Investor, asserted in a recent discussion that a year from now, "We will have seen a recession and we will likely be coming out of it. Whether we're fully out of it or not doesn't matter. A recession at some point in the future means that the federal reserve will stop hiking and will stop shrinking the balance sheet. And they will probably go toward cutting in the future. In twelve months time, the probability of inflation being at eight percent is extremely low."
Bloomberg reported in June that IATA expects the fortunes of the global airline industry to improve in 2023, with North American carriers leading the way. It expects North American airlines to post a collective profit of $8.8 billion 2022 followed by the rest of the global industry returning to profitability in 2023.
It sounds as though, while many economists acknowledge the risk of recession in the next year, it appears many of them also believe that we will be climbing out of it by this time next year. Even in the midst of a possible recession, demand destruction in the airline industry is expected to be minimal if it ends up existing at all.
Over the summer, IATA Director General Willie Walsh told Bloomberg that he anticipates capacity to be restricted in the US domestic market "for some time to come" due to restrictions around the minimum hours required for commercial airline pilots. In other words, IATA doesn't expect the issue of a pilot shortage in the US to resolve itself anytime soon. One way to view the pilot labor market is in terms of supply and demand. If supply is constricted as Director Walsh predicts, and demand remains robust, price for our services should experience upward pressure. Given all of the above, there is a decent chance that the fair market value for our services will rise - if we don't torpedo ourselves by agreeing to lower total contract values than the market will support out of fear of worst case scenarios.
Bloomberg reported in June that IATA expects the fortunes of the global airline industry to improve in 2023, with North American carriers leading the way. It expects North American airlines to post a collective profit of $8.8 billion 2022 followed by the rest of the global industry returning to profitability in 2023.
It sounds as though, while many economists acknowledge the risk of recession in the next year, it appears many of them also believe that we will be climbing out of it by this time next year. Even in the midst of a possible recession, demand destruction in the airline industry is expected to be minimal if it ends up existing at all.
Over the summer, IATA Director General Willie Walsh told Bloomberg that he anticipates capacity to be restricted in the US domestic market "for some time to come" due to restrictions around the minimum hours required for commercial airline pilots. In other words, IATA doesn't expect the issue of a pilot shortage in the US to resolve itself anytime soon. One way to view the pilot labor market is in terms of supply and demand. If supply is constricted as Director Walsh predicts, and demand remains robust, price for our services should experience upward pressure. Given all of the above, there is a decent chance that the fair market value for our services will rise - if we don't torpedo ourselves by agreeing to lower total contract values than the market will support out of fear of worst case scenarios.
In terms of the macro economic environment, we are not necessarily, as you describe, "headed off a cliff in terms of a good negotiating environment." There is a counter argument to be made on that point.
But there remains, in terms of negotiating leverage, factors far more favorable to labor than whatever impact the global macro economic environment might produce.
Think about what just happened with the national consortium of twelve railroad unions representing more than 100,000 workers and 40% of America's freight capacity. What leverage did they have? And what was the source of that leverage?
Their leverage stemmed from the fact that they posed the credible threat of bringing the operations of the companies they worked for, along with the entities that depended on them (like AmTrak), to a screeching halt. And the source of that leverage was the right they had under the Railway Labor Act (RLA) to march down the path toward self help. It's the exact same leverage you at Alaska have available to you and, being almost a year into mediation with near-unanimous strike authorization vote (SAV) behind you, you're much further down the path of fully developed RLA leverage than most of the other airlines currently in negotiations.
If the National Mediation Board (NMB) was willing to declare an impasse in the railroad workers' dispute that jeopardized the entire national economy in the midst of spiking inflation and already-compromised supply chains, why would it not be willing to do so in the case of Alaska Airlines? Because some towns and villages in Alaska might have their supplies cut off?
The railroad workers entered mediation in January of 2022. They were released from mediation in June of this year. That is an insanely short time in mediation. Why do you think it was so quick?
It might have something to do with the fact that the political composition of the NMB changed late in 2021 from two GOP members and one Democratic member to two Democratic members and one GOP member. When the vote to release the rail workers from mediation was conducted in June of this year, guess which NMB member voted to keep them in mediation? That's right, the GOP member cast the dissenting vote and the two Democratic members of the NMB voted to release the rail workers. This change in the composition of the NMB is a potentially very significant development for labor that very few pilots are talking about.
Following their release from mediation, the rail workers then went into a mandatory 30-day cooling-off period. In July, President Biden established an optional 60-day Presidential Emergency Board (PEB), during which time self-help was prohibited. The PEB was due to expire Friday, September 16. Magically, On September 15, railroad management, who had refused to relent to the workers' demands for relief on sick days up to the very end, caved to the pressure placed on them by the rail workers and the Biden administration with less than 24 hours remaining before a strike would have commenced.
But there remains, in terms of negotiating leverage, factors far more favorable to labor than whatever impact the global macro economic environment might produce.
Think about what just happened with the national consortium of twelve railroad unions representing more than 100,000 workers and 40% of America's freight capacity. What leverage did they have? And what was the source of that leverage?
Their leverage stemmed from the fact that they posed the credible threat of bringing the operations of the companies they worked for, along with the entities that depended on them (like AmTrak), to a screeching halt. And the source of that leverage was the right they had under the Railway Labor Act (RLA) to march down the path toward self help. It's the exact same leverage you at Alaska have available to you and, being almost a year into mediation with near-unanimous strike authorization vote (SAV) behind you, you're much further down the path of fully developed RLA leverage than most of the other airlines currently in negotiations.
If the National Mediation Board (NMB) was willing to declare an impasse in the railroad workers' dispute that jeopardized the entire national economy in the midst of spiking inflation and already-compromised supply chains, why would it not be willing to do so in the case of Alaska Airlines? Because some towns and villages in Alaska might have their supplies cut off?
The railroad workers entered mediation in January of 2022. They were released from mediation in June of this year. That is an insanely short time in mediation. Why do you think it was so quick?
It might have something to do with the fact that the political composition of the NMB changed late in 2021 from two GOP members and one Democratic member to two Democratic members and one GOP member. When the vote to release the rail workers from mediation was conducted in June of this year, guess which NMB member voted to keep them in mediation? That's right, the GOP member cast the dissenting vote and the two Democratic members of the NMB voted to release the rail workers. This change in the composition of the NMB is a potentially very significant development for labor that very few pilots are talking about.
Following their release from mediation, the rail workers then went into a mandatory 30-day cooling-off period. In July, President Biden established an optional 60-day Presidential Emergency Board (PEB), during which time self-help was prohibited. The PEB was due to expire Friday, September 16. Magically, On September 15, railroad management, who had refused to relent to the workers' demands for relief on sick days up to the very end, caved to the pressure placed on them by the rail workers and the Biden administration with less than 24 hours remaining before a strike would have commenced.
The sick leave issue for the railroad contract was a big issue because at least one union member was sick, told his family he was sick, but was forced to go to work to avoid the point penalty system and then subsequently died in his train. Now that's a life and death matter. No one deserves that.
Why wouldn't the NMB release Alaska? Because Alaska would have turned down what was the highest offered payrate in the entire country for the 737, along with very significant work rule improvements. Lets face it: it's an industry leading payrate because we are first. I don't see how going back to the table to the mediator paints us in a good light.
Alaska entered mediation in the fall of 2021. You conducted a nearly unanimous SAV in May of this year. You've already been in mediation longer than the rail workers were when they were released. Your SAV has already demonstrated tremendous unity around the idea of using the leverage available to you under the RLA. You are so close yet panicky displays of melting resolve like yours demonstrate how far you guys might actually be.
Good faith bargaining does not require Alaska to accept a milquetoast agreement. Alaska's pilots do not have to accept this TA out of fear the mediator or the NMB might somehow think their negotiating team wasn't reasonable enough. In a 2009 case brought by Spirit ALPA against Spirit, the court asserted, "movement toward the position of the other side is not a requirement of good faith bargaining." It cited an example from a Trans International Airlines flight attendant dispute that had reached another court:
Good faith bargaining does not require Alaska to accept a milquetoast agreement. Alaska's pilots do not have to accept this TA out of fear the mediator or the NMB might somehow think their negotiating team wasn't reasonable enough. In a 2009 case brought by Spirit ALPA against Spirit, the court asserted, "movement toward the position of the other side is not a requirement of good faith bargaining." It cited an example from a Trans International Airlines flight attendant dispute that had reached another court:
If Alaska's pilots were to approach a release from mediation and much more so, if they were to actually be released, news stories would be published telling the public something like, "Alaska pilots released from federal talks. Strike possible in 30 days." What would you do if you heard, for example, Southwest Airlines (my airline) pilots might be on strike six weeks from now and you needed to be in Austin for a wedding then? You could buy tickets on Southwest, Alaska, American, Spirit, Frontier, and others. But let's say SWA's tickets were $100 cheaper than anyone else's tickets. Would you still buy the SWA tickets if you really needed to be in Austin or City X for a wedding or whatever other important event? Or would you book away from SWA onto some other carrier that was assured to not be on strike on the date of your travel?
Do you think Alaska management wants to deal with passengers booking away from their airline if your pilot group were to hold strong and get released? Do you think that this sort of book-away effect wouldn't give your pilot group significant leverage even before a strike occurred? How long do you think Angle Lake would want to deal with passengers booking away from them?
And, in the extremely unlikely event you guys actually ended up on strike, how long do you think the strike would last? How long has the average mainline pilot strike in the US lasted in the last 25 years? Would it last as long as the four-day Spirit strike in 2010? The 14-day Northwest strike in 1998? The 24-minute American strike in 1997? Could you not handle, worst case, two weeks walking the line for the betterment of your profession, yourself, and your family?
Would management try to break the strike with scabs in the midst of a historic pilot shortage?
You have far more leverage than you are alluding to you when you ask in an as-if-we-are-helpless shrinking violet, chicken little sort of way, "I genuinely ask what sort of leverage do you see to get?"
Are you serious? Do you understand how the RLA works? Do you understand how much untapped leverage you all have?
Do you think Alaska management wants to deal with passengers booking away from their airline if your pilot group were to hold strong and get released? Do you think that this sort of book-away effect wouldn't give your pilot group significant leverage even before a strike occurred? How long do you think Angle Lake would want to deal with passengers booking away from them?
And, in the extremely unlikely event you guys actually ended up on strike, how long do you think the strike would last? How long has the average mainline pilot strike in the US lasted in the last 25 years? Would it last as long as the four-day Spirit strike in 2010? The 14-day Northwest strike in 1998? The 24-minute American strike in 1997? Could you not handle, worst case, two weeks walking the line for the betterment of your profession, yourself, and your family?
Would management try to break the strike with scabs in the midst of a historic pilot shortage?
You have far more leverage than you are alluding to you when you ask in an as-if-we-are-helpless shrinking violet, chicken little sort of way, "I genuinely ask what sort of leverage do you see to get?"
Are you serious? Do you understand how the RLA works? Do you understand how much untapped leverage you all have?
From asking around, personally it seems the one big recurring theme seems to be the retro. I should have known, I saw those orange rubber bands in our planes that said full retro or NO vote. My retro shows about 41k total. I had personally estimated around 50-60k but I'm not going to make this a single-issue no vote.
09-24-2022, 10:05 PM
#256
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2018
Posts: 1,264
While you acknowledge there are an array of possible scenarios that may play out economically, you have opted for a worst-case and panic-stricken PFC Hudson "Game over man!" response. To quote you again, "We are literally headed off the cliff in terms of a good environment to negotiate." Boy, am I glad I never had you on my crew going into Mosul or Fallujah. Wow.
The sick leave issue for the railroad contract was a big issue because at least one union member was sick, told his family he was sick, but was forced to go to work to avoid the point penalty system and then subsequently died in his train. Now that's a life and death matter. No one deserves that.
Why wouldn't the NMB release Alaska? Because Alaska would have turned down what was the highest offered payrate in the entire country for the 737, along with very significant work rule improvements. Lets face it: it's an industry leading payrate because we are first. I don't see how going back to the table to the mediator paints us in a good light.
In a dispute between pilot groups and management, which side is generally less well-informed as to how the RLA works and what is possible? Generally, it's the pilot group. Therefore, in mediation, the pilot group is more likely going to more frequently be the target of the mediator's "blarney" and "hoomalimali." Why do I use those two particular words? Because those are the exact words a federal judge used in a 1991 RLA decision to describe some of the tactics that good mediators use as "a tactic to spur negotiations." Read it for yourself:
...we do not think it appropriate for a court to examine a Board member's statements, made in the course of mediation, so critically. Successful mediators often liberally use blarney (hoomalimali in Hawaiian) as one of their mediation tools. The Chairman's statement may well have been a ploy. By inquiring as to the true meaning of such a statement we could well undermine its entire purpose by forcing the Board to admit it was a tactic to spur negotiations.
The Board may let a case sit as a mediation tactic, and it may tell parties that it will let a case sit. Congress chose this necessarily protracted means for resolving railroad labor disputes. As the Board explained, Wallace's remarks are: simply the proper responses of a mediator who does not want to give one of the parties an indication that it no longer needs to negotiate in good faith. Parties who are told mediation may soon end have all the more reason, if they are dissatisfied with the mediation process, to harden their position and not participate in good faith … It is the nature of disputes in mediation for one party to feel squeezed.
The NMB is free to "experiment with any mediation device that can fairly be said to be designed to settle a dispute without a strike and does not independently offend other laws."
At the end of the day, the mediator can't force you to do anything. They are not an arbitrator. They can't compel your pilot group to ratify a TA the pilot group doesn't want to ratify.
The only thing the NC is required to do is bargain in "good faith." Go read the Spirit ALPA case from 2009 I already referenced in my initial reply to you. I'll repeat it again here. It's important to first understand: "MOVEMENT TOWARD THE POSITION OF THE OTHER SIDE IS NOT A REQUIREMENT OF GOOD FAITH BARGAINING." Then, re-read this:
The union disputed the claim that there would be a cost increase estimated to be 294% but Chief Judge Peckham found it simply "unnecessary to the resolution [of the good faith bargaining issue] to determine the actual figures. [The airline] is effectively asking the court to hold that the sheer size of the Teamsters' economic demands, and the distance between the parties after a long period of negotiations, amounts to a lack of reasonable effort by the union to reach an agreement." The district court concluded it was forbidden by "'the strong federal labor policy against governmental interference with the substantive terms of collective-bargaining agreements'" from pursuing the matter further ... neither the size of one party's demands nor the "distance between the parties after a long period of negotiations" "amount to a lack of reasonable effort . . . to reach an agreement...
I can certainly respect your opinion. Mine is the opposite, that it is highly unlikely we'll be released for cooling after turning down this TA. While we may have had the ever slight chance of getting an impasse declared before this TA offer, IMO that window closes after we turn down what was in some ways industry leading for pay, and in line with what the pilot group claimed were important to them (scope, work rules).
What you don't understand is that the "window" of being able to obtain a release from mediation never closes under the RLA as long as the parties remain in mediation. Do you know why?
Because, under the RLA, labor has a right to strike. Yes, that's right, we have a right to strike. It's not a privilege. Under the RLA, that right can never be taken away from us.
Says who?
Says the Supreme Court of the United States of America:
Implicit in the statutory scheme [of the RLA], however, is the ultimate right of the disputants to resort to self-help.
But when the machinery of industrial peace fails, the policy in all national labor legislation is to let loose the full economic power of each. On the side of labor, it is the cherished right to strike. On management, the right to operate, or at least the right to try to operate.
So NO, the mediator, were your pilot group to reject the TA, cannot permanently put you on ice or somehow otherwise close the window on the possibility of a release from mediation. They can lie to you and say that is on the table. But they cannot, in reality, follow through on that.
An enormous weakness of almost every pilot and every pilot group is a disastrously poor and hobbling understanding of the RLA. Pilots have shortchanged themselves, their families, and their profession for decades now because 99% of them refuse to take a few hours over the course of their entire careers to dig into the ins and outs of the RLA and try to understand it rather than sponging up the telephone-game myths, and fairy tales they've been told about it by jaded malcontents of years past.
You not knowing how the RLA works or what power the mediator actually has puts you, ShyGuy, in the pretty gross position here of advocating a yes vote on a subpar TA when you, the pilots of Alaska Airlines, actually have far more leverage than you realize.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK.
Last edited by Lewbronski; 09-24-2022 at 10:23 PM.
09-24-2022, 10:27 PM
#258
Gets Weekends Off
Thread Starter
Joined APC: Dec 2005
Posts: 8,933
Lewbronski, my previous airline had a contract 1999-2005 amendable. We negotiated for a long time, entered mediation, got TA#1 around 2009. We voted it down. Mediator then subsequently iced us for 6 months. So yes, I’m aware of the process and what could (potentially) happen (or not). I hear you, but we disagree on your phrase “sub par” agreement. I don’t think it is.
09-24-2022, 11:08 PM
#259
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Dec 2008
Position: NYC 330
Posts: 484
Oh, right doesn’t bode well for the industry, I had no idea. I’m changing my vote now. Yeah Alpa National was blind sided by this TA… We actually tried to do this all on our own, without Nationals help… they are very upset, this is a travesty, thanks for coming over and setting us all straight👌
Do you even have a clue about how our section 25 will work, mr Brown easy no?
Do you even have a clue about how our section 25 will work, mr Brown easy no?
The industry finally has some leverage it’s disappointing to see the obsession with hourly rates. The job is way more than that.
Good for you if you think this is a “win” it looks way short to me.
Not meant to insult anyone why so butt hurt?
I had to come over and check
it out when I heard it was so bad, actually worse than I imagined.
Typical senior guys with the hard sell insulting those who don’t tow the line…and your an “instructor”?
Lighten up
Francis…shesh.
09-24-2022, 11:13 PM
#260
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: May 2016
Position: 737 tiller master
Posts: 288
Lewbronski, my previous airline had a contract 1999-2005 amendable. We negotiated for a long time, entered mediation, got TA#1 around 2009. We voted it down. Mediator then subsequently iced us for 6 months. So yes, I’m aware of the process and what could (potentially) happen (or not). I hear you, but we disagree on your phrase “sub par” agreement. I don’t think it is.
